When she returned to the foyer, Gram was red-faced arguing with Frank who was showing Gram that nothing else appeared to be missing. Gram looked up and spotted Jude, narrowing her eyes on the dead cat clutched in Jude’s hands.
Her grandmother was a formidable figure, standing nearly six feet tall with raven black hair and a sharp pointed face that could only be described as witchy. Her personality matched.
“You, you,” she sputtered marching to Jude and ripping Felix from her hands. “No wonder your mother’s gone. What kind of mother would want the likes of you?”
Peter walked in, eating an apple.
Gram spun and grimaced at Peter as if he were an ugly extension of his twin sister.
“What do you mean, mom’s gone?” he asked, casting troubled eyes at Jude.
“Yeah. Mom and Dad are picking us up today,” Jude snapped at Gram who clutched Felix as if he were a prized diamond and not a dead, stuffed cat.
“She’s dead,” Gram hissed and turned, stomping back to the parlor.
Peter turned to Frank who blinked after their grandmother.
Jude clutched the polished banister beneath her hand. She tried to make sense of her grandmother’s words. Had she said their mother was dead?
“I, I hadn’t heard. I…” Frank stuttered looking at the twins. Camille hurried in from the kitchen, her face pinched with worry.
“Is it true?” Jude demanded.
Camille reached for her, but Jude spun away.
“I don’t know, honey. Your daddy will be here soon and… I just don’t know.”
Jude turned and ran out the door, letting it hang open behind her. She raced across the grounds and into the forest beyond. She didn’t need to turn to sense Peter behind her.
Hattie
Hattie sat huddled beneath a comforter in Gram’s huge parlor. Though it was stifling hot beneath the blanket, she stayed put, watching the bodies moving about through a sliver of fabric.
Everyone wore black. Black pants and dresses and funny little black hats with spiderweb veils. Tiny black pearls studded the surface of Gram Ruth’s veil. Even Hattie’s daddy wore black though that morning he’d been in khakis and a blue shirt when Gram saw him walk down the stairs and practically screamed he was dressed inappropriately for the occasion. Her daddy rarely listened to Gram, but that morning he had. He walked back up the stairs, his smile gone, looking like the outdoor dogs after Frank hit them with a switch.
Gram laid out a plain black smock for Hattie which she refused to wear after she refused to take her bath. Beneath the comforter she wore the yellow summer dress with purple thread her mama had sewn for her that summer. The thought of her mama made her belly hurt. She didn’t know why, just that Gram Ruth said, Mama went to heaven and wasn’t comin’ back and that made Jude and Peter cry and their daddy leave the house for long walks. Since Gram told them the news, Peter had stayed in his room and Jude stalked the house with angry red eyes and Hattie knew better than to talk to her.
“Hattie-bug?” Her daddy’s voice floated down to her through the hot dark space she’d burrowed into. “I got you a piece of cake,” he said, his big gray eye appearing at the hole she peeked from.
His eye disappeared, and Hattie saw a hunk of cake frosted in white sitting on one of Gram Ruth’s fine china plates. The special ones piped in golden swirls that Gram only brought out at Christmas. Hattie’s stomach grumbled at the sight of the cake, but she shook her head roughly.
“No, Daddy,” she whispered.
“How bout I take you upstairs, Hattie-bear? Blanket and all?” he asked, reaching inside her cocoon and finding her sweaty little hand.
“Okay,” she agreed.
He lifted her and carried her away. Gram tried to stop him, but he brushed past her. Hattie saw Gram’s feet stuffed into her ugly pointed black shoes. Jude called them witch’s shoes. In her bedroom, Daddy set her on the huge four-poster bed thick with frilly pink bedding.
He pulled away the heavy comforter and helped her onto the pillows. His face looked drawn and tired, but his eyes did not seem sad.
“It’s going to be okay, Hattie. I promise.”
He kissed her lightly on the forehead and left the piece of cake on her bedside table. Gram Ruth would have a fit, a shit fit Peter would say. No food was allowed upstairs.
Hattie watched her father retreat from the room, his stiff black shirt clinging to his sweaty back.
Jude
Four days. Four days since Gram uttered the words your mother is dead.
Jude sat in the parlor in a black dress that Camille had made. She had refused the black tights despite Gram’s malevolent stares at Jude’s bare legs. People stood in little groups, talking, eating tiny sandwiches, patting her father on the arm. They offered Jude paper words of sympathy and gave her stiff hugs she wanted to shrug off. Peter stood with Danny who stared at her at every opportunity, gazing at her naked legs like a dog in heat. She refused to look at him, to look at anyone.
Felix, the dead cat that had spurned those hateful words from her grandmother, was tucked in his cabinet and covered with a black tablecloth. A framed photograph of her mother sat in its center surrounded by fat white roses. Her mother, Ann Elizabeth Porter, stared out from the frame in her white wedding gown, her signature gold locket suspended from her delicate neck. Her long golden hair flowed over her shoulders and her blue eyes seemed to watch Jude across the room. Except she was dead. She would never watch Jude again.
It seemed macabre to Jude that Gram Ruth had chosen her mother’s wedding picture for the memorial, but her father relented. He seemed uninterested in the details. When Jude tried to get him alone, he brushed her off claiming errands and phone calls, anything to avoid her.
In a matter of days Jude’s life had ceased. She still existed, a body, a set of organs, a brain, but the light - where was the light? She felt nothing, numb, and then in other moments she felt everything - her mother’s soft hands rubbing her back when she fell asleep at night, the long sweet grass she and Peter rolled in at their family’s farm, the warmth of the fire they sat by playing board games, eating popcorn, telling stories. Had those things died with her mother? Had they all died, but been left to walk the earth as fleshy bags void of heart?
“Jude?” She looked up to find her grandmother holding a piece of pecan pie. It was Jude’s favorite and though her grandmother was smiling, Jude saw the disdain tucked behind her dark eyes.
“No, thank you,” she murmured.
“You need to eat, Jude,” Gram Ruth said, pushing the pie closer. “Camille made this special for you.”
“I’m not hungry,” Jude said, turning her gaze back to her mother’s photo.
“Take the pie,” Gram said through gritted teeth.
The smell wafted in Jude’s nostrils and brought a wave of Christmas Eve dinners. Her mother made a pecan pie every year just for Jude.
Jude lashed out, slapping the plate from Gram’s hand. It flew across the thick carpeting, the plate skidding to a stop at the feet of several people. Gram lifted a hand as if she would slap Jude, but Jude was already on her feet, pushing past Gram, shouldering through the group by the door, racing through the house. She ran out the back door and into the woods, kept running, pulling her dress over her head so she wore only her slip and bra.
A creek ran along the back of the property and Jude waded in, the water icy cold, and shocking. Her feet sank into the slippery mud and she threw her body forward letting the water swallow her whole.